HP Lovecraft, that lovable horror writer. Everyone’s heard his name, read his books, or seen movies based on his many stories. But how many of you have listened to music inspired by his mythos and could serve as a perfect back drop for a movie adapted from his stories? Outside of industrial music, I’ve heard practically none that could match the overwhelming fright of the Cthulhu or the psychotic fright of Beyond the Wall of Sleep until I came across AEP’s Les Montagnes Hallucinees.
Yep, it’s another French slab of blackness from Occultum Productions France. As if you can’t tell, I’ve got a bit of a soft spot for this tiny label but Voxum keeps bringing out incredible releases such as this one. This is 60 minutes of pure black ambient delight with some true noise undertones. Before I even popped the disc in, I was taken aback by the unusual packaging. I’ve come to expect a black DVD case with a desolate landscape of cover art and a black disc inside but this release is left of field for Occultum. It’s a regular jewel case with an unlabled disc in it with a translucent front and back cover. When the light hits this case, with the CD in of course, it reminds me of an ominous blackened blue fog. Little did I know this was a hint of what was to come.
Upon first listen, I’m confronted by horrific sounds that take me to the darkest places in my mind. Les Montagnes Hallucinees ensnares you with a slow moving pace, cut and laced with atmosphere of bleakness and despair. For the next 60 minutes, I’m trapped in what feels like the most desolate and empty place on Earth, only to have a terrifying soundtrack accompany me on the journey. Since there’s no real guitars, drums (the drum machine does not count!), bass, or vocals on the whole disc. Since the album is a single track, I can’t skip forward a track or two to get a better feel for the album, I’m stuck in this black dirge of sound pulling at my sanity. I believe this is the full intent of having a single track, why escape one track for another when you cannot escape the darkest parts of your psyche for another. You’re stuck there till the end and there’s no way around it.
Meldhkwis does an excellent job of trying to scare me senseless and I made it through the entire release twice before I realized it had even repeated once, I was completely drawn into the music. Thick ambient waves of droned out sound hit you like a black wave of fear and hate, only to be broken by the occasional sample of a man crying or the high pitched shrill of metal scrapping metal that cuts your hearing and grinds your nerves like nails on a chalkboard. I love this CD but frankly, I’ll never listen to it if I’m trying to go to sleep otherwise I’ll try and kill myself in my sleep. This marks only the second full release from AEP that I was able to track down, among a myriad of occultic and ambient split releases with other bands. And if I’m right, this is one hell of a sophmore release.
With only 111 copies made of this atmospheric slab of music, you’d better pick up a copy from Occultum before they’re all sold out.
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